Christmas at Biltmore is a step back in time

Saturday

Dec 22, 2012 at 1:54 PM

By Maggie FitzRoy

maggie.fitzroy@jacksonville.com

It was the tallest Christmas tree I have ever seen. Decorated with ornaments as large as my arm, and ringed by gifts piled as high as my waist, it appeared to almost touch the top of the 70-foot ceiling.

On the other side of the banquet hall, at the other end of a massive dining table, additional lighted Christmas trees flanked a blazing fireplace.

I could easily imagine myself one of George Vanderbilt's guests on Christmas Eve 1895, when he first opened his new home, Biltmore, to friends and family members.

It must have been grand, and it still is.

Christmas is still gloriously celebrated there, and the holiday season is the peak time for visitors to the 8,000-acre estate in Asheville, N.C.

The 250-room French Renaissance-style chateau is filled with 38 decorated trees, 500 wreaths, 1,500 poinsettias and "zillions of ornaments," according to the audio tour. The house's interior equals four acres.

Vanderbilt "was inspired by the mountain scenery to build a small get-away," I learned on the audio tour as I explored the attraction in early December. He ended up building the largest home in the country.

It's still the largest privately owned home in America, and since I had never been there, I decided to go at Christmas.

The reality is that my ancestors would have been one of Vanderbilt's servants, but anyone can visit his home today via daytime tours, and candlelight tours during the holiday season.

Biltmore offers plenty for everyone at other times of the year as well because the estate, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, also features miles of picturesque forests, valleys, farmland, rolling hills, nature trails, streams, ponds and formal gardens.

It also contains Antler Hill Village, which offers dining and shopping, a winery with free wine tastings, and a Biltmore Legacy exhibition hall.

The Inn on Biltmore Estate, where I stayed, is located on top of a hill within the grounds, where memories of what the real world looks like fade away as you immerse yourself in Vanderbilt's dream. When you stay there, you can ride a shuttle everywhere you need to go. Or you can drive yourself (there isn't any traffic, and no traffic lights).

Touring the estate outdoors, you feel like you are in a pastoral painting.

"This place is gorgeous, perfect," I thought as I made my way to the inn.

Then I learned on the house tour that the grounds were designed to look that way by the same architect who created Central Park in New York City, Frederick Law Olmsted.

"The landscape appears natural, but was part of Olmsted's careful plan," a shuttle driver told me as we traveled along Approach Road, which leads to the house. Olmsted designed it so that you can't see the house until you round a curve, and then it springs fully into view.

After an eight-hour drive from the Jacksonville Beaches, I arrived at Biltmore around 4 p.m. to check into the inn. I then toured the grounds, stopping at Antler Hill Village, which is decorated at night with tiny white lights.

The next day I toured the house, gardens, green house, village and small village farm, and after dark I went back to the house for the candlelight tour. My two-night stay gave me plenty of time to see all I wanted to, and still have time to visit downtown Asheville before heading home.

I went mid-week, which is the least-crowded time.

The house tours are unguided, so the audio tour is a great feature because you learn about the Vanderbilt family and the home as you go from room to room.

When Vanderbilt held his Christmas Eve housewarming party, he was a 33-year-old bachelor, one of the heirs to the Vanderbilt family fortune that was launched by industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt.

He hired the best architects of the day, Olmsted for the grounds and Richard Morris Hunt for the house. It took six years to build, and Vanderbilt decorated it himself. As the youngest son in his family, he didn't take part in running the family business, but dedicated himself to being a gentleman farmer running Biltmore as a self-sustaining estate.

Touring the home's interior during the holiday season, you feel like you are in an Edwardian Christmas card. When you first enter the house, you find yourself in the entrance hall, which, at Christmas, is filled with hundreds of potted poinsettias. During the candlelight tour, a youth choir sang holiday songs there, and musicians played instruments in other rooms.

The tour leads in an orderly way through the house, upstairs and down, through the billiard room, banquet hall, breakfast room, salon, music room, tapestry gallery, library, and family and guest bedrooms and gathering rooms, and some of the servant areas.

Every room has at least one Christmas tree, most have many more. The rooms are also draped in holly garland and other decorations, including flowers, that Vanderbilt and his family might have used.

There are no historic photos of the house at Christmas time, but Biltmore's designers use period-appropriate pieces to evoke the elegance. The gardens are mostly dormant in winter, but the large green house is filled with poinsettias, growing among tropical plants and palm trees.

Vanderbilt married New York City socialite Edith Stuyvesant Dresser in 1898 in Paris. Their only child, daughter Cornelia, was born in 1900. George Vanderbilt died in 1914 at age 51 of complications from an appendectomy, and Cornelia eventually inherited the estate. Her heirs still own it, so the home has all of its original furnishings and looks much like it did during the Gilded Age.

A Vanderbilts at Home and Abroad exhibit in the village provides an interesting and photographic history of the family. They traveled widely, and were booked to sail on the Titanic in 1912, but changed their minds before departure and sailed on the Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic, instead.

They also entertained extensively, providing a array of activities for their guests. The indoor heated swimming pool is on the tour, as is the fully equipped gymnasium.

The house was built with 43 bathrooms, during a time when most American homes were lucky to have one. The house was also wired for electricity during construction, including the pool for night swimming. It was fitted with underwater lights, when most homes in the country had none.

Biltmore is still a magnet for the wealthy. One shuttle driver told me that a couple recently held their wedding on the front lawn at the cost of about $1.5 million. He said they spent $18,000 for the invitations alone.

I must have missed mine.

But it was fun to visit George Vanderbilt's country estate all the same, and I wouldn't mind going back during another time of the year.

Driving out of the gate to go home, I appreciated Olmsted's genius. Too bad the rest of the world doesn't look as naturally pristine.

Maggie FitzRoy can be contacted at (904) 302-3394.

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